_why and Zed walk into a formum, the matter - antimatter reaction destroys the net for Gigabytes around.
_why is no more
161–170 of 421 posts
Re: _why is no more
#162My guess is that he got hired by an intelligence agency.
Re: _why is no more
#163I just noticed that _why apparently deleted his twitter account. I then found that that wasn't all he deleted: http://twitter.com/_why http://github.com/why http://whytheluckystiff.net/ http://poignantguide.net/ http://hackety.org/ http://shoooes.net/ All disappeared... For those who don't know who I'm talking about: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff
Someone outed him here: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/
What a mean-spirited thing to do to someone who just wanted to stay anonymous. It makes me sad and angry.
If this is the reason _why decided to pick up and leave, I understand it. We have his code, it will live on. Perhaps he will return in another guise.
Re: _why is no more
#164I just noticed that _why apparently deleted his twitter account. I then found that that wasn't all he deleted: http://twitter.com/_why http://github.com/why http://whytheluckystiff.net/ http://poignantguide.net/ http://hackety.org/ http://shoooes.net/ All disappeared... For those who don't know who I'm talking about: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff
Someone outed him here: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/
Something doesn't seem right about that detective work - there's a Jonathan Gillette online who is a web developer in Harrisburg, PA who doesn't seem to be _why. Obviously it's likely that there's more than one Jonathan Gillette on the internet, but it seems odd to me that this other guy is also a web developer, with a decent online presence, in (somewhat) the same geographic area where _why is suspected to live, that isn't him.
But I don't know enough about e-mail headers to provide an alternate explanation if there is one.
EDIT: This is that other guy's site, FWIW: http://jonathangillette.net/
And he's on twitter: http://twitter.com/jgillette
EDIT 2: The infamous Zed Shaw posted a link to another page which I'm more inclined to believe is the real _why. I'm not going to post the link here, but you can find it in Zed's twitter stream if you really want to.
Re: _why is no more
#165At the risk of being a little insensitive, this is a very good argument in favor of DCVS's.
Re: _why is no more
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Name some circumstances which justify pulling down a broadly-used open source project like Hpricot. At a certain point it must be admitted that a project has a life beyond its author.
It could be a dead man's switch. (But I'm really hoping it's not.)
How exactly do you implement a dead man's switch for your online accounts? Do you just leave your account info for your estate's executor, lawyer, friend, or whatever and he manually deletes them? Or do you have some script that will automatically run and delete your accounts if you don't tell it not to every week or so?
I've often what happens to people's free email addresses after they die. (I suppose nothing in most cases.)
Re: _why is no more
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to think I have utmost respect for _why. I have certainly never said or done anything against him in the past, nor ever felt anything besides quiet appreciation for his efforts. If he wanted to quit, that's his right, of course. But at least give people a day's notice before he nukes everything , right? "The fact that you would care more about his shepherding of repositories" Care more about them than wh…
No, he shouldn't give people a day's notice. He doesn't owe it to you, he doesn't owe it to me. That makes two of us. Let's imagine we're not unusual in that regard. Who does he owe a warning, then? when you release open source code there's a kind of implied promise that you don't suddenly delete the master repo in a fit of internet pique. You're making a lot of assumptions, not least among them _why's motivations (s…
I'm going to agree with sho on this matter. If you provide something and give the impression that you will continue to provide it, you are partly responsible when people become dependent. You are certainly not required to continue to provide it, but you should at least give warning that those who were dependent have a chance to adapt.
When you quit a job or end a contract you ordinarily give notice. It's the same principle, and a matter of courtesy. --- That said, I've no idea what's really going on here, so I'm loathe to pass judgement.
Re: _why is no more
#168I just noticed that _why apparently deleted his twitter account. I then found that that wasn't all he deleted: http://twitter.com/_why http://github.com/why http://whytheluckystiff.net/ http://poignantguide.net/ http://hackety.org/ http://shoooes.net/ All disappeared... For those who don't know who I'm talking about: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff
Someone outed him here: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/
I'm sure someone in the know told me his real name a couple years back (he wrote the foreword to my book) and it certainly wasn't Jonathan Gillette. Of course, he might have changed him name again.. :)
Re: _why is no more
#169Re: _why is no more
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone outed him here: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/
What a mean-spirited thing to do to someone who just wanted to stay anonymous. It makes me sad and angry. If this is the reason _why decided to pick up and leave, I understand it. We have his code, it will live on. Perhaps he will return in another guise.
mean-spirited? he gave the internet a challenge and somebody took it up, that's all.
oh, and it doesn't have to be his real name, too.